For Silvia

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/marina-abramovic

Silvia - -  Painted lady: The words that came to mind were... 

cartoonish

performance

female body

female face

society expectations

endurance / performative

uncanny

breaking the 3rd wall

covering “reality” 

disguise

masking

liveness

false

The piece that Silvia presented in this weeks critiques really appealed to me.  On a personal level, as a female who wears make-up on occasions that I feel as if I am performing for society, it brought to the forefront of my thoughts some interesting topics. On the days that I wear make-up I do this consciously because I am “performing” and trying to portray myself as completely acceptable to the society that we are caught in.  However, on the days that I do not wear make-up, I do this consciously as well because I do not feel the need for “performance” in my daily actions, or at least as much.  What else comes with this performance? Silence, endurance, masking... 

Silence: 

The silent female... The female that is not allowed/expected to speak and often spoken over.  Often the female form is set up for “looking” and not for “hearing”, and the objectification of the female body.  The view of the camera and the voyeurisitic establishment of the shot and the manner with which the viewer is looking into a private “masking” of the “real” female face.  At the end when the person walks away, the mask is left behind, the only remaining remnant is the “false” and “fake” and the “cartoonish” covering that women carry everyday to hide their true complexion.  

Endurance: 

Endurance is an interesting aspect of this piece as well.  Much like an Marina Abramović working with performance and endurance.  I feel as if this could be very interesting if the viewer is forced to watch for the entirety of the amount of time it would take for a female to apply make-up.  It becomes a commentary as well about the amount of time women spend each day to disguise themselves and become “acceptable” in society.  The uncanny of this piece that is established with breaking the third wall, can be further emphasized by the even more exaggerated endurance of this piece.  

Masking: 

The remnant of this piece, the glass with the small painting on it, was also a very interesting aspect of this piece.  By having this lasting, cartoonish figure remaining of the piece there is another reflection of the mask.  The remaining mask is also textured and layered and very false.  This layering of makeup, once again shows an interesting aspect of the female form and exhibiting just how “false” the everyday, performative face of the female form truly can be.  

I’m interested in how you personally felt while you were doing this piece, and your interaction with the topic. (see the marina abramovic ART21 link)  Performance art can be utilized as a self exploration, and as a female, I suspect that you had a complicated relationship with this piece. 

Thank you so much for sharing this very beautiful and moving piece!  

Objects and Images

I thought Krista’s recent installation was a fascinating exploration of objects and representation. Krista’s manipulating both the object (coffee cups), and their photographic image brought up so many interesting questions about the relationship between the image and the object.

One of the things that interested me most was the manipulation/destruction of the images themselves, presented next to the other “physical” representation. What does the destruction of the image-as-object achieve? For me, I think it foregrounds the photographic image as an object separate from the cup—and I thought that the destruction that carried over from the photograph to the frame (in the instance in which it did) was very interesting as well. Within many contexts, the frame of an image is basically supposed to be ignored in our reading, and our reading of the image is supposed to be limited to what is represented— ie, the image is not an object within the gallery space. Manipulating the frame itself was a very interesting component to this piece, and for me would have made the piece an “installation” even if the cups had not been present, or if the images were hanging on a wall, because it gives me the sense that we are not merely looking at images, but objects that have been transported from another space. Moreover—there’s a really neat tension between what is “real”: is one object more true than the other?

For this reason, I think it’s unimportant to me whether the object in the frame is an actual representation of the object next to it, or not. But I do like placing the two objects side by side, as this is a natural sort of reading—and this context plays on our reading of events, and how we read referents, whether they are words, or whether they are images that index an event. I think is very effective in terms of working with memory.

Something else that we talked about in class was: how do we read these specific objects, a rather undecorated coffee cup and a very domestic- looking picture frame? For me, it is impossible to view these objects without a sense of the mundane, the every day. These objects for me are private and domestic—and made more so by their re-contextualization within a public space. This displacement of the everyday also feels like a really interesting strategy to use in contemplating how memory works.

response to Krista

                                                                    RESPONSE TO KRISTA  

First if all, I would say good work, good job. It is nice to see subtle, personal but universal work, that is silent but open in its appeal the emotive, transitive, if not transcendental aspects of existence. There was a lot of conversation about certain theoretical issues concerned with the ontological relationship between the tea cup as a thing-in-itself and the somewhat cul-de-sac like debate concerning how the thing-itself relates to its photographic representation and how each form represents a different but unique relationship to the other. You managed to present a marriage of sorts between the teacup itself and it’s nearest duplicitous relative, the Photograph. Though the teacup and the photograph are both in themselves inherently self-representative, their self-representations are seen as occurring on anomalous and differing ontological levels, which may be true, the photograph of the teacup is not the teacup itself, but simultaneously it is not not the teacup any more than a memory of my grandmother is somehow innately not connected to my actual grandmother or that a bird is innately different from its birdness.  It is this amorphous tight rope of tenuous connectivity that you seem to have crossed with a delicate and lightness of touch. You quietly threw a life line to the much maligned imperfection and much suspected relativity of photographic depiction and anchored it not only in a two way relationship between the concrete physicality of the object itself and the photographic depiction itself, but in doing so you stretched the obvious binary relationship of object-photograph relationship to a further humanized tripartite relationship that binds the teacup and the photograph of the teacup to an inescapable linkage with a third element of emotional-spiritual embodiment.  Here the simple marriage of harmonizing dualities takes a supple shift away from the mere physicality of representation and opens up a serene subjectivity of contemplation and embodied complexities that are not available through the mere physical / representation itself.

 I think part of what helps the piece to succeed is the way the teacup itself functions as non-utilitarian object. It is simple thingness. It is not, so to speak, a teacup to be drunk from, it is not a teacup to be cleared from a cluttered morning table, nor is it a teacup that has any use value other than in its delicately sensuousness and minimally decorated form. It sheds its culturally induced usefulness and returns to something more primal and non-technological, it transforms into something of a talismanic mirror or a semiotic actor concerned with the unyielding dialectic of permanence and change. Transience. Memory. Mortality. As I thought about the cups pairings with their photographic “Equivalents” I began to think that they were not just three discrete pairings making three discrete and perhaps separate iterations, but they could be observed as a sequential and allegorically relational, not only to your intent of memory, but they could also point to differentiated phases of life.  In the first pairing the cup as well as its photographic representation is clean, undisturbed and intact, an undisturbed reflection of unblemished youth. The second pairing of the broken cup with its photographic representation in an equally broken frame could be read as the pain and crisis that inevitably comes with time. In the third pairing the cup is again in one piece, even if the cup and the frame are soiled and in less than perfect cosmetic youthful form the cup has returned to a state of inexplicable wholeness.  This third section speaks of old age. Soiled, and having overcome earlier trials there is a return to wholeness. An imperfect, and impermanent state, that can still be a perfection as long as perspective glances at it with an acute and compassion enough eye.  

I hope that you work further with the motifs of silence and memory and let us not forget simplicity.

Family Day: Film Action

This looks worthwhile. From the Tate Modern in London:

"A participatory event, Film Action invites visitors of all ages to explore moving image through interventions, projections and the live creation of 16mm film works with moving image collective, no.w.here, artist Anna Lucas and live publishing collective CATALOG."

Here is a link to the post that I send out via e-mail LINK.  What is below is a copy of the text from the blog post:

Poshlost: fake emotion, unearned nostalgia

All bad photos are alike, but each good photograph is good in its own way. The bad photos have found their apotheosis on social media, where everybody is a photographer and where we have to suffer through each other’s “photography” the way our forebears endured terrible recitations of poetry after dinner. Behind this dispiriting stream of empty images is what Russians call poshlost: fake emotion, unearned nostalgia. According to Nabokov, poshlost “is not only the obviously trashy but mainly the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.” He knows us too well.



The home page for this blog is http://www.aphotoeditor.com/

Enjoy and all the best-

Alphonso Lingis-- a philosopher taking pictures

Lingis is a distinguished philosopher and translator of Emmanuel Levinas. He also shoots pictures, and in this interview describes acts of photography and the activity of looking at images through the filter of his long involvement with phenomenology and existential philosophy. -- Here is the interview A.L. Thinking about photographic images, I think we come to revise the way philosophy distinguished between reality and image and between subjective and objective. Discover images that the things, and not the human mind, engender. Since Descartes and Locke and their friends, a critical question for philosophy was: How can I be sure that I am not dreaming? How establish the difference between perceptions that genuinely exhibit real things, and dreams that are concocted within the mind by the mind? "Images" in general were taken to be fabricated by the mind itself. I instead set out to recognize that the things themselves engender "images" or doubles of themselves--shadows, halos, the images of themselves they project on water, on the glass of windows---and also on the surfaces of the eyes of mammals, birds, fish. For example, the puddle of water that appears shimmering on the surface of the road ahead in a hot day is not "subjective," produced by the mind; it is engendered by the road and the sun and everybody in the car sees it.

Remix Short Film Contest

Cory Doctorow, author of the newly released book Pirate Cinema, will be hosting a short remix film competition and the deadline for submissions is 5pm on October 12. The films can be no longer than 3 min. in length. (follow the link below for more details)

Pirate Flix Contest

The Instant Photographer

There were so many questions and topics covered during Nick's Instagram presentation that I find it hard to pick a starting place. At some point, an argument was made that because of a mobile photo applications ability to quickly apply analog film aesthetics to it's images that most people are considered photographers today and that they could possibly be in direct competition with professional photographers. I would agree with the first part of that statement. Every two minutes we take more pictures that the whole of humanity in the 1800's and with a billion photos on Instagram, there are a lot of people creating images at a rapid pace that are sharing and looking and quickly developing an eye for image creation. They are more rapidly on their way to becoming photographers because of this instant technology. However, I disagree with the idea that Instagram can put everyone's pretty good photo in direct competition with a professionals work.

As I see it, Instagram, Hipstamatic, Camera Bag and all of the other 23K mobile photo apps are tools that photographers should embrace and use when they are needed. The professional should be more than the person who "presses" a button on their phone. At minimum, photographers should role with the punches and adopt new technologies and paradigms in terms of evolving image technology. It may take some discipline on their part to keep up, but if they don't they might be working for an iPad one day. 

Some professional organizations and photographers currently use these apps in their work and publications. Getty Images, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated all have used mobile photo app images in their publications. Greg Foster used the Hipstamatic app to create a portrait that SI used over his Canon DSLR shots for a feature spread.

Regarding the scope of Nick's work and the direction it seemed to be heading, I think that Instagram alone might not be the best choice of topic for the documentary. Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram (and more recently Google's acquisition of Nik Software, the makers of the popular Snapseed app) ties it's use directly to social media. The app isn't about photography; it's about sharing. For many mobile photographers, photos are a means of exercising personal creativity. With filters and effects now offered in so many apps (again Hipstamatic, Camera Bag, 8mm), developers are exploring and creating these film looks for mobile photographers to uniquely express themselves. It has little to do with comparisons to actual film aesthetics in my opinion. There was a suggestion that Nick should interview a more diverse group of people for the project and I agree with this idea. Interviewing younger students who aren't photographers and middle-aged adults who use photo apps might provide a more panoramic view and understanding of the popular use of these filters. 

Concerning Instagram specifically, our questions should be less about the aesthetic choices of mobile device users and more about what Instagram can do with our images once they are shared. Let's look at their Terms of Use:

…By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the Instagram

Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid

and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add

to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content,

including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media

formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly

(“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

…You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on

or through the Instagram Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license

set forth in this section, (ii) the posting and use of your Content on or

through the Instagram Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity

rights, copyrights, contract rights, intellectual property rights or any other

rights of any person, and (iii) the posting of your Content on the Site does not

result in a breach of contract between you and a third party. You agree to pay

for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of

Content you post on or through the Instagram Services.

Remarkably encompassing in their ability to take rights from photographers as a condition of using their service. (but how cool would it be to have your image used as a visual gimmick for some electronics chain store or pet food product viral campaign?)

Getting back to Nick's central question about why people use these vintage film filters, Karen Rosenberg had an insightful piece in the New York Times about the retro look that is enabled by apps like Instagram:

"Why do we want to tweak our photos so conspicuously? Why do we suddenly

want them to look as if they came from old analog cameras?…Nostalgia is

certainly a factor; parents, for instance, may want their children’s photographs

to look like the ones in old family albums…The photograph itself,

even an artily manipulated one, has become so cheap and ubiquitous that it’s

no longer of much value. But the experience of sharing it is, and that’s what

Facebook is in the business of encouraging us to do."

Another area we covered was the idea of digital images and the use of analog filters were somehow viewed as being false. Damian Sutton deemphasized the loss of indexicality of digital technology in his essay “Real Photography.” He explains:

Digital photography, and especially its apparently invisible manipulability,

destroyed the photograph’s privileged connection to the object. Without this

anchor to reality, the semiotic relationship seemed over-balanced towards the

iconic and the symbolic—i.e. representation. Yet the concerns expressed in the

1990s, that the digital image equates photography with fallibility and distrust,

now seem caught up in the historical moment of digital technology’s first real

flourishing; photography has always been “dubitative”. . . and this characteristic is

not the province of the digital image alone.

As Sutton argues, reading an analog photograph as connected to reality is an ideological function of photographs based on their indexicality. The perceived connection between analog photographs and reality has always been ideological, and so the shift from analog to digital is not as great a change when looking at the function of digital photographs. 

And finally, speaking in general about digital image making, Marshall McLuhan describes the impact of new media with the phrase “the medium is the message.” McLuhan’s “medium” is any extension of the human senses and he focuses on media such as print, photographs and telephones throughout his text Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). McLuhan’s “message” explains the way a new medium affects a culture, “for the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” He provides the railway as an example. This medium “did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human function, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure.” Similarly, digital photography “accelerates” or “enlarges” traditional photographic processes. 

Photographers should leverage this technology; not get replaced by it.

Some Thoughts On Todd's "Sonic Light Bulb" & Intersensory Phenomena

Todd,

The main device in your piece uses a three-step transduction process: sound energy to electrical impulses to light energy. We use transducers all of the time in the media arts. For example, the sound artist uses a microphone as a transducer, usually as a method of “capturing” sound and fixing it to a medium (analog tape or digital representation) for manipulation. Your work is fundamentally different in that it takes sound energy and ultimately transforms it into light energy. What follows is an experience that explores the overlap between what we normally think of as discrete senses.

 I am reminded of the existence of rhythm in written language, dance, and film editing. Rhythm tends to be favored as an aural representation, music being perhaps its most obvious incidence. But we often discuss written language in terms of rhythm as well. The famous metrical-line rhythm iambic pentameter for instance is ten syllables per line, five alternating pairs stressed and unstressed:

   u       /           u         /         u         /        u       /          u          /
mac-BETH! mac-BETH! mac-BETH! be-WARE mac-DUFF!

Iambic pentameter still works unspoken because we automatically associate the words we read with their sounds. Thus, even though no sound energy is being generated by words on a page our brain tells us how they sound.

Rhythm in dance and film editing is different from this in the sense that neither are perceived or interpreted sonically (unless they contain a sonic component as in the case of tap dancing). When we talk about rhythm in dance we are talking about the change in body position over time, especially instances of repetition and the alternation of weak or strong body movements (like stressed or unstressed syllables). In film editing it might be a succession of evenly spaced fast cuts. Both of these instances utilize rhythm as a visual sensory experience; however, in dance the dancer also experiences rhythm with his or her somatic sense. The dancer feels the rhythm.

It seems to me we can experience rhythm through three of our senses: hearing, sight, and touch. I'm fairly certain we can't taste or smell rhythmically (might be interesting to research!). As you continue to develop your sonic light bulb I encourage you to explore this kind of sensory overlap––"intersensory phenomena" I'm calling it, though I'm sure somewhere there exists a coined clinical name. I spoke to you in class about seeing how it reacts to simple music. Perhaps this would be a good place to start?

Nick

Lights, Language and Sound

     Why was I so distracted by that light? I kept talking, but I wasn't looking at the person I was talking to.  I was transfixed on the light pulsing and fading with the words that I spoke.  The experience was confusing and I was left with the question of why I became so transfixed on the flickering light in the corner of the room?  Why I became more conscious of the volume, timber, and rhythm of my own voice and how the simple example we saw in class could be utilized in an art experience?


     The changing of phenomenon A into a the syntax of phenomenon B forces an evaluation.  In our example this evening we translated sonic information into visual light information.  We saw how our input as a user and creator of sound effects the luminance, intensity, and color of a light bulb using hardware that interprets sound into electronic resistance.


     What is the potential of such a technique? What approaches can be used to utilize these effects and technologies to create a meaningful art object and experience?  I specifically use the word experience here; the input-to-feedback chain that we see calls attention to our role as sound makers.  The experience itself can be uncanny.  The act of carrying on a conversation while a pulsing light is translating your words into a symbolic Morse code in real time calls attention to words being spoken in those moments, the act of vocalizing can become as important as words themselves.  The speaker, or sound maker, is presented with their own voice mediated by a household object into a language that is not decipherable by the speaker.


     This uncanniness is a result of the translation and disconnect experienced by the viewer and participant.  Similar uncanny examples can be made from non-sonic events. When describing things like grass or flowers we often use descriptors like pretty, colorful, thorny, long, not words like slow moving, agile, or patient.  If these plants or flowers are viewed through the lens of a time lapsed film they take new life as an animated uncanny being.  The plant hasn't changed, but the context in which we experience has.  A disconnect occurs when we compare all the previous data about plants against the new information that we are being presented with.  This disconnect is the uncanny, it is the mechanism that has the potential to initiate a critical discourse in the viewer.


     A source for this disjuncture of previous experiences and the experience of sound transformed into light is a result of the viewer's newness to the sensation.  The process of translating sounds into pulses of light is a commonly used practice to alert  deaf and hard of hearing persons of specific sounds.  If a baby cries the sound will be picked up by microphones installed into the room and trigger lights in the home to pulse 3 times in quick succession, if the doorbell rings a long single pulse will be seen and an endless list of sonic events can be given visual representation as light.  This systems relies on familiarity with translating representational flashes of light to their real world events.  Because there is no such codified correlation between the fading and brightening of the light and the input from the user in the art installation the soundmakers and viewers have no frame of reference to compare the pulsing flashes against.  They are not privy to the translation of light pulses and their sonic origins.

     A second source for this disjuncture is the simultaneous sensation of both making sound and observing that sound in real time.  This is a similar experience to what Synesthetes perceive when presented with stimuli.  Synesthesia is a  condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.  Synesthetes may see the color purple and have a specific taste triggered, observe a sequence of numbers and have them represented by patterns of color, or taste a food and experience pins and needles in their fingers.   Simultaneous stimuli can distract the brain.  One synesthete, Wagio Collins, writes that when she views a film the colors, sounds and visual stimuli can overwhelm her experience and she only sees auric colors on the screen instead of the film.  Imagine seeing a symphony of color with every word you speak or sound that you hear floating before you eyes.  Now imagine how distracting that could be.  That scenario is closely linked to the mental experience of the viewer or soundmaker in this type of art installation.

    To what ends can this technique be used?  We discussed many ideas and options about how this apparatus could be implemented.  Large scale, 30 or more units, creating a dance of light on the exterior of a building from the sound being created inside that building, recording the sounds of a building's foundation shifting and translate that into light, including the viewer as a participant and performer within a piece where the viewer is prompted to perform an action and that action results in sound that is then translated into light, and the list goes on from there.  The element of communication through sound and light is inherent in this proposed type of work and the physical location/venu, arrangement, and level of user knowledge and interaction leave the door wide open to a myriad of works that can address just as disparate of topics and ideas.

AAUP Call for papers-

The AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom(http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/jaf/) seeks scholarly articles relating to the topic of academic freedom and globalization. How is the expansion of US higher education around the world and the increasing international integration of academia affecting academic freedom? In what ways, conversely, is the globalization of higher education transforming academia within the United States, shifting and impinging upon traditional notions of academic freedom?

Some of the topics that might be germane to this discussion include:
Academic freedom at satellite campuses such as NYU-Abu Dhabi and Yale-Singapore. How does the expansion of the liberal university into such authoritarian states affect its mission and the forms of academic freedom enjoyed by scholars at such institutions?

From the Occupy movement in the US to the uprisings in Chile, the last year or so has seen a wave of student protest. These protests have often targeted the increasingly privatized, corporate character of education around the globe. In what ways have these protests highlighted issues relating to academic freedom? How, for example, has faculty control of curriculum been inflected by these apparently economically driven protests?

The Palestinian Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) Movement picked up steam and generated significant controversy in recent years in the US and Britain. The AAUP rejects this campaign, largely on the grounds of academic freedom. Can a case be made for endorsing the campaign without infringing academic freedom? How might the previous history of academic boycotts inform our perspectives on this issue?

Around the globe, austerity is being imposed on academia in the wake of the Great Recession. What is the impact of specific austerity measures on academic freedom? Where can we look to see how things might be done differently?

During the last year, so-called Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have exploded in popularity, with large international student subscriptions to both for-profit and not-for-profit online courses offered by elite US private institutions such as MIT and Stanford. What is the impact of such MOOCs on education and academic freedom in developing nations?

The due date for papers on the topic of academia and globalization is January 31, 2012.

In addition to accepting scholarly papers relating to this topic, theJournal of Academic Freedom continues to welcome submissions on eclectic topics.

Electronic submissions should go to jaf@aaup.org and must include an abstract of about 150 words. The journal uses the sixteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and authors should anticipate that if their article is accepted for publication, it will need to be put into Chicago style.

Ashley Dawson, Editor, Journal of Academic Freedom

From Claire Soares: "Conservation"?

Hello all,

There are certain truths that may be news to "wilderness" fans. Many would-be conservation activists don't know them either. If everyone already knows these, sorry but that was not evident from last week's discussion. So here goes.

The wilderness is not resistant to human disease and the contamination non-wilderness pros (people who are not game wardens, on research assignment in a specific jungle or forest) can track into pristine areas, could wipe out entire species. So tourists and other non-wilderness pros are increasingly allowed only into carefully tailored game parks that are monitored by wardens and vets. Researchers apply for permits months, sometimes years ahead. The exceptions may be a well financed media project, such as for instance, the filmmakers from a crew such as Planet Earth's. But even with the money already budgeted, the lead time to get permits for certain areas was a major production hurdle. The number of DPs on that series numbered just under 50 and the series took 5 years to make. Certain sequences took months to capture on camera. The actual cameras required to capture all of this are not within the budget of most film schools in the world.

For these reasons and more, MOST of the wilderness films and TV programs made today are made in some form of game park. Great care is taken to construct these to keep human clod hoppers, however well meaning, out of wilderness where they can wreak havoc. If there are "brave" humans who are in jungles or savanna or forests, they are, more often than not, poachers. Or clucks who came without a permit.

The other reason game parks serve the public is their cross breeding programs, carefully constructed to breed endangered species, using inter-zoo transport routes, to prevent inbreeding. Often the healthy babies that result are reintroduced to the wild to supplement dwindling numbers of wildlife. The Chinese panda and the Orinoco crocodile are two such species programs. Restoring the wilderness balance in this way helps keep wilderness human tribes healthy.

Any genuine conservationist knows the visual difference between wilderness reserves and real jungles instantly. And if someone's just a wildlife-loving member of the public, they don't care about anything other than seeing a beautiful animal. I've been fortunate enough to be on (legitimate) trecks through wilderness in many countries. However, the best footage I (and most professional "wildlife wilderness filmmakers"today) get is generally in controlled environments, where we don't cut down trees to get that "different angle on that bird," and relax knowing there's a vet at hand if we give a saki monkey the flu. Besides, on hikes through real rain forest, one could never carry everything needed without a large crew of porters. And then, we'd still need months in-situ to capture animal friends on camera, at least one or two makans and a rope hoist and traverse system through the canopy. Until I get that Planet Earth budget, I'll do things the normal, safe way.